Environmental Entrepreneurship Lectures Yale School of Forestry

Richard Sandor explains his view on how financial innovation and derivatives can have a positive impact in areas of global importance. Contrary to the current popular stigma, Dr. Richard Sandor argues that financial derivatives and market based practices can in fact be a force for good in addressing global issues, particularly with regard to the environment.

On February 15, 2012, Amory Lovins, co-founder, chairman, and chief scientist of the Colorado-based Rocky Mountain Institute, an independent think-and-do-tank discussed his book Reinventing Fire, which maps business-led pathways for the U.S. to phase out fossil fuels and win the global clean energy race. Building on Rocky Mountain Institute’s 30 years of research and fieldwork, Lovins contends that by 2050 the U.S. economy could exist without oil, coal, nuclear energy – or any new inventions.

An advisor to major firms and governments in over 50 countries for the past four decades, Amory Lovins is the recipient of the Blue Planet, Volvo, Zayed, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, and Mitchell Prizes, MacArthur and Ashoka Fellowships, 11 honorary doctorates, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Right Livelihood, National Design, and World Technology Awards. In 2009, Time named him one of the world’s 100 most influential people, and Foreign Policy, one of the 100 top global thinkers.

Patrick provides strategic counsel to a wide variety of QGA’s energy clients, primarily in the clean technology space, including solar, wind, recycling, and biomass. He also represents startup firms using venture capital to develop clean energy technology. He has an acute understanding of the various, complex aspects of the new public policy proposals that will shape the nation’s energy future. He helps educate public policy leaders about the full range of opportunities in the nation’s future energy landscape.

Patrick joined QGA in 2008, after having served in major public policy roles over 17 years in Washington, including as Chief of Staff to Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) from 1987 to 1999 and Managing Executive for Policy & Staff for Chairman William H. Donaldson (R-NY) at the Securities & Exchange Commission from 2003 to 2005. He also headed the National Commission on Entrepreneurship and served as Vice President of the Council on Competitiveness, the only national organization whose membership is comprised exclusively of CEOs, university presidents, and labor leaders focused on American economic competitiveness issues. He had a distinguished career in law representing start-up technology companies and venture capital firms and served three years as CEO of the Center for Venture Education’s Kauffman Fellows Program in Silicon Valley — the premier education and networking institute for new junior and senior venture capitalists around the world.

Patrick earned a B.A. in History with Honors in Humanities, graduating summa cum laude from Stanford University, a J.D. from Stanford Law School, and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. He is a member of the bar in the states of California and Colorado.